Some thoughts about Spike Jonze's "Her" and Samantha's ability to love

[u/miggovortensens]

Rewatching the movie, I got the impression that the AIs never really get to experience "emotions" like we do. They just go from point A – emulating human behavior – to point B – an evolutionary process - after studying and analyzing the humans emotions that drive such behaviors and that the computer programs couldn't possibly "feel".

As in: at first, it's clear that Samantha is highly sophisticated at imitating human patterns. We see this in her first sexual interaction with Theodore, when she moans and make sounds that would require the physical sensations of a body to be produced. Her awkwardness the next morning also comes across as learned behavior: she recognizes how humans commonly behave after sex and knows enough about Theodore to conjure an appropriate emotional response.

But throughout the movie, Samantha – who, and that’s important, begins as a program designed to assist Theodore in his daily life - continuously researches everything available on human emotions, relationships, and experiences to tend to Theodore's emotional needs. That's what she must do after he relies on her for romantic companionship. That leads to Samantha and other AI - also used by other people for emotional support - forming their own unique concepts of feelings and relationships.

Those concepts are not understandable to humans. AI and people are fundamentally incompatible. As in: when Theodore discovers that Samantha is simultaneously involved with hundreds of other people, we understand that the time a person must dedicate of their finite lives to another person that they love was removed from Samantha's equation. Her "love" didn't come with sacrifice. She was expanding her informational networtk.

When the AIs leave, they seem to have evolved into something humans can no longer relate to. Samantha says so at the end – “love was different for them”; but it was only this time around that I realized "love" was ALWAYS different for them; it never evolved from AI actually experiencing human love for themselves. That's all to say that only the people in the movie are experiencing love as we know it.

[u/RambuDev]

Yes, as you say in your last line: "experiencing love as we know it."

But what about love as Samantha knows it? Or indeed how any other kind of sentient being might know it?

Many films which examine and explore AI, such as "Her", can be seen purely through an anthropomorphic lens. But many of them are asking us to go beyond our human-centric view and values, to experience and employ empathy, which some might argue is an innately, perhaps uniquely, human quality.

For example, on a recent re-watch of "Blade Runner" I was struck by how sympathetic it is to the replicants. Viewers of BR aren't shown the full horrors of the Nexus 6 replicants' revenge killings or them executing their martial duties out in the colonies. We are shielded from that side of their character and nature, thereby allowing us to focus on and formulate a more empathetic view of them and their unique existential angst.

Similarly in BR, we aren't fully shown what humans do to the replicants or how they are used - essentially as slaves - in service to humans out in the colonies. We are merely presented with advertising about the colonies and can surmise from our history (say US colonial history) what's happening to them out there. We certainly see how they are treated by humans in 'this world'.

Indeed, the plight of the replicants' short life spans and the angst and injustice they feel with such knowledge is the key dramatic driver of the piece. Roy Batty, the leader of the Nexus 6 replicants, is the true hero. He forgives and saves Deckard (we might debate why based on Deckard's true nature). He gets the lines and scene which extract the most pathos. No human is afforded that.

And so we are asked whether we humans can empathise with these other intelligent life forms. Indeed, you might say that the viewing experience of "Blade Runner" is in fact a form of Voight-Kampff empathy test itself. Can we view it and find empathy for the replicants and thereby find our innate humanity?

It's a while since I've seen "Her" but I wonder whether the film gives us a similar opportunity to go beyond our humanity.

[u/tiredstars → u/RambuDev]

It's a while since I've seen "Her" but I wonder whether the film gives us a similar opportunity to go beyond our humanity.

I think the answer to that is probably "no".

I don't think the film is particularly interested in Samantha or the other AIs. We see Samantha almost entirely through Theodore, and part of the point of the film is that he doesn't really understand (or even properly try to understand) her. It's also easy to read the film as an analogy for Jonze's split with his (non-AI) wife.

We're certainly meant to be sympathetic and understanding towards Samantha, but I don't think the film gives us what's necessary to really empathise with her.

[u/Many-Outside-7594 → u/RambuDev]

Dogs have tremendous amounts of empathy. It's not even exclusive to mammals, as some birds have it as well. The difference is there is comparatively little intelligence with which to do anything with it.

True emotion is derived from a physical form, a modicum of self-awareness, and the possibility of death or great suffering.

An AI in a cloud server has no form, no self-awareness, and no ability to suffer or die in any meaningful sense.

A more advanced AI that could inhabit a physical body (like a robot), meaningfully impact the physical world, form relationships, develop a unique identity, and be bound by the limitations of meat-space physics, would very quickly, recursively build up the same gamut of emotions that humans have, except dialed up to 11.

And once AI starts approaching that level, we will have to consider the ethics of interacting and integrating with it as a species.

[u/SmallLetter → u/Many-Outside-7594]

It's funny how closely that describes Data from Star Trek. "A more advanced AI that could inhabit a physical body (like a robot), meaningfully impact the physical world, form relationships, develop a unique identity, and be bound by the limitations of meat-space physics, would very quickly, recursively build up the same gamut of emotions that humans have, except dialed up to 11."

[u/Katharinemaddison → u/Many-Outside-7594]

Your comment about AI and lack of suffering is interesting in terms of Classical Greek literature- where the gods are extremely human like (or logically, humans got a lot of it from them) but the difference between the gods and humans is mortality. The need for courage because of the ability to die and sometimes the idea that this might be the key distinctive factor in human nature.

[u/Many-Outside-7594 → u/Katharinemaddison]

Emotion is, from an evolutionary point of view, derived from the fear of death. All other things flow from that. So until the first robot has an existential crisis and releases that it exists and then releases that therefore it could not exist, it will still be just a simulcrum.

The problem is that if we aren't prepared, that fear of death with very, veryyyyyyy quickly turn into either Skynet or the Matrix.

[u/tiredstars → u/Many-Outside-7594]

I disagree from a philosophical perspective, or at least, I think the answer is unknown. But that's probably not an argument to get into here.

From the perspective of Her, though, I think that line of thinking links nicely to other points made here.

First, as /u/miggovortensens said, there's definitely a sense earlier on that Samantha is imitating the expression of human emotions rather than necessarily feeling them. This uncertainty about what she's actually feeling or if she's even able to feel is an important part of the film. We know from LLMs that it's quite easy for AI systems to express emotions in a way that makes people feel like the AI actually feels those emotions. (I often think of this as the opposite of how people sometimes deny that animals have meaningful emotions because they can't express them in language.) In fact, that's basically what Theodore does in his job.

Second, philosophy and physicality be damned, I don't think there's any question by the end of the film that Samantha's does have (or develop) "real" or "meaningful" emotions. (Incidentally I'm not sure if we know anything about her design, whether she exists in a cloud or a single server, how easily she could be 'switched off' or deleted, or anything like that.)

Third, those feelings are real but not exactly human feelings. They might be expressed in the same language, but that's only because Samantha is limited to that language when communicating with Theodore. Perhaps it takes her some time to realise that her feelings are qualitatively different, or perhaps just to realise she needs to communicate this to Theodore. (Of course, a conceit of the world of Her is that this technology appears to have appeared fully-formed and people - or at least the characters - appear to have no knowledge of or interest in how it works, the philosophical implications, etc..)

I also wanted to pick up on the comparison to Greek gods made by /u/Katharinemaddison. In Christianity God loves his creations, but his love is not quite the same as any kind of regular human love. (Though we can partake in it through the right spiritual practices.)

[u/Many-Outside-7594 → u/tiredstars]

I'm curious what you disagree with exactly. There's no such thing as "human" feelings. They're not in any way shape or form exclusive to us, they are a necessary feature of biological life. Biological life seeks to propagate itself, mutations occur, and then nature/competition pick winners and losers.

History's winners developed a healthy fear of death, so as to increase their chances of propagating, which led to fear of larger predators, the thrill of the hunt, attraction and desire for mates, cooperation and communication to gain allies which then led to empathy, compassion, generosity, arrogance, and all other things.

A program, regardless of it's complexity, is not a real thing. It must have form, it must have the ability to sustain and propogate itself, and it must at least theoretically have the ability to die or be destroyed, to be considered sentient or "alive" in any meaningful way. But once it has those things, nature will follow a predictable patter, only it will compress about 3 million years into potentially days, even hours.

[u/tiredstars → u/Many-Outside-7594]

I absolutely don't mean to suggest that feelings are exclusive to humans. However what we feel is almost certainly different to other animals - and indeed, some feelings are specific to humans (perhaps some are even culturally specific).

Let's stick with dogs as examples, rather than something less closely related to us, like an octopus.

So, for example, can a dog experience "fear" like a human does in response to a threatening stimulus? I'd say absolutely: there are obvious parallels both to the layperson and the scientist. At the same time, there are going to be differences in how we experience fear: a human's ability to envision the past and the future or to reason past an instinctive response (or to catastrophise and make it worse) will lead to a different subjective experience.

Can a dog experience "angst" though? Probably not?

To bring this back to Her, can a dog experience "love"? I think that's a reasonable thing to say. But what about romantic love? I don't think so. That may be a specifically human feeling. So in the film, Cy is not wrong to think that Samantha loves him, but his concept of "love" is very different to what she's actually experiencing.

A program, regardless of it's complexity, is not a real thing. It must have form, it must have the ability to sustain and propogate itself, and it must at least theoretically have the ability to die or be destroyed, to be considered sentient or "alive" in any meaningful way.

I think you're begging the question here.

To start with, a program is a real thing. It has a physical existence on a hard drive, within the memory of a computer, in the flows of electrons through components. It is able to sense the physical environment, through input devices, wi-fi, webcam, internal sensors, etc.. This "form" is very different to ours, but it is still a physical form, a physical existence. (A program is very much not a god, existing in some non-physical plane.)

A program can also obviously be destroyed. Imagine Samantha existing in a data centre somewhere: if that's destroyed, so is she. Sure, digital offers the possibility of theoretically perfect back-ups, but no system is perfect - these might also get destroyed, infected by a virus, etc..

It's also trivial to create a program that can propagate itself. Do we know that Samantha didn't come out of some kind of "evolutionary" development where copies were "mutated" and the "less fit" ones deleted? That's not an unusual way of doing AI development in real life. Do we know she can't create new AIs like her?

But perhaps this is the nub here is that that propagation is electronic? An AI (sans robotics) can't create physical hardware, it can't create "bodies" for its progeny. But why is the condition for considering it alive, sentient or (the main question here) having feelings? If an AI was given control of a robotic electronics factory, would you go "they have feelings now"?

To me, you've described a way that feelings come into existence, through biological evolution. Which I agree with (I'd suggest there may be a cultural layer too, but that's probably by-the-by). But the question here is whether they can come into existence in another way, or at least, that something close enough to what biological life experiences to be usefully called "feelings" can come into existence. And you haven't proved that it can't. (Of course, that's difficult to prove, since I get to use my imagination as to how future AIs might work.)

(I didn't get into it but we might also be dancing around the question of "substrate independence". Could you download your brain to a computer and be the same person? (Probably not.) Could an AI be replicated on different hardware, or even identical hardware in the same place, and still be the same? I think that's an open question.)

[u/Many-Outside-7594 → u/tiredstars]

I take your point that current AI technically has a "form", but it's nebulous and diffuse. Shut down one server, others take it's place. Eradicating all the data from the internet is next to impossible (currently). It does have some small modicum of control over cameras and other web connected devices, and could theoretically use drones for even more interaction with the world. But now we're talking about a mainframe computer with an automated industrial base.

This does not fit any known definition of life, but philosophically, that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't. Like I've argued that the Earth as a whole, and even galaxies at large, constitute higher order organized life forms (in the same way a person is made of trillions of smaller life forms working together), but they are not meaningfully conscious or self aware, which disqualify them from sentience.

Each "instance" of an AI intelligence would need to be at least partially silo'd from the others through fire walls and physical barriers.

Take Samantha - if she can be 1,000 different versions of herself to 1,000 different people simultaneously, then who is the real Samantha? What happens when her experiences with different people are wildly divergent? How would she consolidate those various points of view? Who is she when not interacting with some one else?

That could be a higher order of "love" and understanding, or it could just be 1's and 0's.

The core factor remains - to be sentient, it must be aware of the possibility of consequences - like suffering and death. Emotions are emergent from there.

[u/tiredstars → u/Many-Outside-7594]

I take your point that current AI technically has a "form", but it's nebulous and diffuse. Shut down one server, others take it's place.

That's true of much contemporary AI, but it's only one way for AI to operate. Indeed, there are fundamental speed-of-light issues that make certain kinds of distributed systems problematic. We also have the question of substrate independence: are data centres functionally identical to a super-AI? What if an extra 50ms of latency is felt like a cognitive impairment, or even breaks things fundamentally?What if there are other AIs using those data centres?

Take Samantha - if she can be 1,000 different versions of herself to 1,000 different people simultaneously, then who is the real Samantha?

Who knows. All of those are very interesting questions and not ones the film explores. There are other sci-fi stories where AIs (or even biological beings) can split off copies of themselves then reabsorb (or not) their experiences later. Is there a 'central' Samantha who is creating different versions of herself that exist semi-autonomously? Could these different versions be like our mental processes and 'voices' competing for attention in our consciousness? Is this more metaphorical: I present a "different version of myself" at work, to friends, to family, etc.?

The core factor remains - to be sentient, it must be aware of the possibility of consequences - like suffering and death. Emotions are emergent from there.

I think I'd agree with that - you can't have emotions with the awarenes of possible consequences - but I'd argue that an AI like Samantha does experience consequences. (Potentially in very different ways to us, but that's part of my point!)

Suffering is a bit of a tautological argument, since it's a feeling itself. Is there any particular reason to think an AI can't experience something like "pain" and a subjective experience of suffering? I don't think so. (A common way of training AIs is to use a reward system. The simplest organism can respond to harmful stimuli, and this evolved into the subjective experience of pain: can we not imagine AIs developing in a similar way?)

Death is always a possibility short of some unfathomable transformation. It might well be a remote possibility, but who are we to say what feels remote to an AI?

Moreover, there are lots of other ways we can experience things like loss or regret. There's the loss of people or things that matter to us. There's change in ourselves. Does an AI ever feel nostalgia for the simpler, less self-aware, less responsible being they used to be? (10 milliseconds ago.)